Baseball Heritage Museum takes a licking, keeps on ticking

When a busted pipe in the ceiling destroyed some of the memorabilia at The Baseball Heritage Museum, located at 530 Euclid Ave. in the Colonial Arcade, Davison and Zimmer wondered what was next.

“Some of the places actually had eight to 10 inches of water,” said Davison, the museum's curator, who noted that the burst pipe wasn't discovered for several days.

Davison said it was the museum's second flood since last April, and the latest scare caused quite a bit of damage to the broadcast section of the museum that is located on the ground floor.

Instead of questioning their luck, Davison and Zimmer, the museum's founder, are counting their blessings.

“Bob and I think it was a blessing in disguise,” Davison said. “It was a wakeup call. A lot of people didn't know what we had there.”

What they did have was what many old-school baseball and radio fans describe as a Cleveland treasure.

There were photos, exhibits and memorabilia from Major League Baseball and the Negro Leagues. The lower level contained Davison's gems — the baseball and radio broadcast exhibit, featuring old turntables, typewriters, a makeshift newsroom, and a baseball broadcast booth from the 1930s, among its artifacts.

Lately, Davison has been boxing up memorabilia and trying to find a new home.

“We're a little leery about keeping stuff there because once a piece of memorabilia gets damaged, you can't really replace it,” he said. “A lot of this stuff is one of a kind.”

When we spoke Tuesday morning, Davison said the response to the news of the flood has been almost overwhelming. He has heard from the University of Akron and Kent State University, as well as “people who have warehouses and storefronts with available space.”

Later Tuesday, Davison received a call from the Lake County Captains, a Class A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. The Captains will meet with Zimmer and Davison on Wednesday afternoon, and Davison said the Eastlake-based club mentioned moving the museum's artifacts to Classic Park on a temporary or full-time basis.

“We're going to form a committee of broadcasters, five or six veterans, so we can better decide where to go,” Davison said in reference to all the memorabilia he has collected. “Before this, we never thought about what would happen if something should happen to me. But now we are. It was a good eye-opener.”